Salaries for successful sales staff in leasing companies are rising significantly ahead of the overall fleet market, according to recruitment firm Jobco-op Automotive.

Derek Webb, sales director, said: “Contract hire and leasing has always been a highly competitive sales environment and one that is increasingly being described as essentially saturated but we are picking up on definite signs that many leasing companies believe that their current sales teams are underperforming.

“In this situation, they will run through and closely examine the factors that they can improve and increasingly, we believe, are looking at the staff that they are employing.

“More and more are approaching us with the aim of finding the very best sales talent available. Top performers with strong track records and established clients are highly sought after.”

BusinessCar understands that basic salaries for good business development managers have risen by £10-15,000, or approximately 30%, to around £60,000. This compares to an average increase in salaries of around 2% over the same timeframe.

Webb said the situation was leading to a kind of polarisation among the recruitment market for sales staff in fleet leasing.

He explained: “Even when salaries are pitched at relatively conservative levels, candidates who you might class as good are increasingly not getting an interview while those with less impressive but appropriate CVs are being instantly discarded.

“What we are seeing is a race to pick out the best people and a willingness to provide the right kind of package in order to attract them. In many cases, the salaries that are being offered at the moment for good business development managers with proven track records are very, very attractive indeed.

“The market is dictating that if you want to attract the highest quality candidates, you will have to pay for them.”

Meanwhile, UK wages are set to rise at an average of 2.5% in 2014 with lower inflation leading to net wage growth of 0.4%, the highest level for two years, according to professional services firm Towers Watson.

Towers Watson’s 2014 Salary Budget Planning report suggests pay rises will reduce from 3% last year to 2.5% this year across all professional employee levels, inflation is now expected to average 2.1% over the course of 2014. The UK economy is also anticipated to grow faster than wages in 2014 with 2.7% GDP growth predicted, up from 1.9% in 2013.